There’s a lot to gripe about in Donald Trump’s speech about how he would fight ISIS, but one point that doesn’t seem legitimate is scoffing at Trump’s comparison of the current effort against radical Islamism to the Cold War battle against Soviet-led Communism.
Trump said:
In the Cold War, we had an ideological screening test. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.
In addition to screening out all members or sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles – or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.
Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into the country.
This morning, Jen Rubin writes:
The comparison to Cold War policy of attempting to exclude communists is inapt. We are talking here about individuals’ religious views, not their dedication to overthrowing the government. The vague reference to refusing entry to those “who support bigotry and hatred” raise a host of First Amendment issues. What about devout believers who think homosexuality is a sin? Can the United States impose a religious test for one faith?
The Soviet Union’s ideology was a lot more like a religion than either its leaders in Moscow or most Western foreign policy analysts would ever admit. Didn’t most Soviet officials treat the Communist Manifesto as a holy Scripture or central religious text? Wasn’t the General Secretary comparable to a Pope or Ayatollah in terms of his supreme moral authority and power? Weren’t Marx and Lenin revered like prophets? Communism was ultimately a utopian vision of everyone delivered into paradise after a last battle and the victory of the righteous in a near-eternal struggle — something that sounds an awful lot like a lot of the world’s religions. How different was the Politburo in its role from a clerical caste or the College of Cardinals? Didn’t the Soviet Union have de facto heresies and excommunication, via being shipped off to Siberia or execution? Soviet citizens even lined up in Red Square to look at the mummified body of Lenin under glass… and then scoffed at the silliness of Christians for keeping bones of the Saints in reliquaries.
An ideological belief system is an ideological belief system, whether it includes a divine figure or not.
Both Cold War-era Communists and modern Islamists believe in overthrowing the American system of individual freedom and instituting their own conformist vision upon all others. The questions asked of those seeking green cards wouldn’t have to be that different from current ones; the U.S. citizenship test already asks about “freedom of worship” and “freedom of religion”; both answers are now accepted. If a person does not believe in the right of others to worship as they please, they are already at odds with American ideals and should not be admitted or permitted to stay.